We're getting a new Kate Atkinson novel, set in a 1920s nightclub.
This fall is shaping up to be a very exciting time for new books by beloved writers—we’ll be getting two new novels by Cormac McCarthy, a new collection by George Saunders, and, as announced by Doubleday today, a new standalone Kate Atkinson novel, Shrines of Gaiety.
The novel is set in 1926 London, which, after World War I, “has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time.”
The story sounds like it combines elements of Atkinson’s previous standalone novels (Life After Life and A God In Ruins were both set in the years during and between the two wars) and her Jackson Brodie novels. It tells the story of Nellie Coker, a ruthless, ambitious nightlife queen and mother of six. “But success breeds enemies, and Nellie’s empire faces threats from without and within. For beneath the dazzle of Soho’s gaiety, there is a dark underbelly, a world in which it is all too easy to become lost.”
Shrines of Gaiety will be published on September 27, 2022.
Jessie Gaynor
Jessie Gaynor is a senior editor at Lit Hub whose writing has appeared in McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Glow was published by Random House in 2023. You can buy it here.
